Dear CJPC Members and Friends,

Mark your calendars! Once again, it's time for CJPC's Annual Meeting. In the year since our last members' gathering, "everything has changed." We know you probably can't stand to hear that cliché one more time, but for non-profit organizations like CJPC, it's true: we are living with new realities-especially with respect to criminal justice. More than ever, our Annual Meeting will be a time to reflect, re-connect, and redirect our energies.

In the last year, we have succeeded in establishing CJPC even more firmly in the Massachusetts landscape as a resource for criminal justice information. Our Speakers Bureau has reached a collective audience of nearly 1,000 citizens. Plus, we've increased our number of individual members and tripled our organizational membership!

The coming months will truly be a "make or break" period for CJPC. Our search for a new Executive Director is under way, and we are awaiting word on renewed foundation support of the Speakers Bureau. We are also collaborating with other criminal justice groups to create a Peoples' Committee on Corrections Oversight-because with budget cuts and stories of suffering and abuse in prisons and jails emerging almost every week, we can't wait any longer for the legislature to create the long-sought Advisory Committee. We're going to do it ourselves.

Therefore, this year it's urgent that we join together to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?"

Please join us:

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 6 - 7pm Social Hour and Buffet, 7 - 8:30pm Program First Church in Roxbury, 10 Putnam Street, Roxbury, Mass. (617) 445-8393 or (617) 482-3170 x319

Please bring a dessert or beverage (non-alcoholic) if you can. And if you haven't yet renewed your membership for 2002, we'll be glad to accept your $20 payment at the meeting. See you there!

Best regards,

David Elvin Acting Executive Director